


Bright Light, Too Bright

by Selenay



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, F/F, Femslash, Hangover, Morning After, Post-Episode: s01e03 Time and Tide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 11:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4261836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selenay/pseuds/Selenay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The hangover was terrible, but the company made up for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bright Light, Too Bright

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this after "Time and Tide", got it beta'd by the lovely [chaneen](http://archiveofourown.org/users/chaneen/pseuds/chaneen), and then RL got on top of me and I never posted it. So, five months later, here it is. The episode tag that everyone has already written. Hopefully this is still enjoyable despite the huge time gap.

Peggy's head was going to explode. If she moved even a fraction of an inch, it was going to roll off, or blow up, or, possibly the worst option, stay right where it was and carry on throbbing like an excruciatingly painful...thing.

She didn't have enough brain power to think of an apt comparison. The only tiny bright side she could see was that the last time she'd had a hangover this rotten, every muscle had also ached from dancing the night away, and she'd woken up with ticker tape tangled in her hair. This hangover felt awful, and it tasted oddly peachy, but at least she wasn't a solid ache from her head to her toes. Most of the pain was concentrated around her head, actually. If she ever managed to move again without wanting to die, moving her arms and legs would probably be quite painless.

A low, soft groan from somewhere nearby made Peggy open her eyes. She immediately regretted it. Much too bright.

The noise came again, and Peggy realised with a foggy sense of surprise that it was very close. Right by her ear, actually, and puffs of warm air were tickling her neck in a steady rhythm, almost as though someone was breathing.

Almost as though the weight against her shoulder was a head, and the heavy bar across her waist was an arm.

Peggy opened her eyes a crack. Moving her eyes hurt almost as much as turning her head, but she managed to make out the shape of the window to her left. Bright light was streaming in through it, the pale yellow of early morning sunshine.

Moving with as much care as she could, Peggy slowly turned her head away and looked down to confirm what she'd suspected. Angie's dishevelled hair hid her face, but it was unmistakably her form curled around Peggy, arm across Peggy's waist, and their legs tangled together. Peggy's bed wasn't really wide enough for two, but they'd managed. Most of the evening was a blur, but from the severity of her hangover, Peggy judged that Angie probably hadn't been steady enough to make it back to her room next door.

Not without making a racket loud enough to alert most of the building.

Angie made another unhappy sound, and her arm tightened around Peggy's waist.

"Am I dead yet?" The question was muffled against Peggy's shoulder, but Angie's tone was pathetic and wan. "Can I be dead if I'm not?"

"I'm afraid we're both alive," Peggy said.

"Oh. Ow."

There were memories nudging at the back of Peggy's mind. Blurred memories. Vague sense impressions of warmth and pink. She knew they were supposed to mean something, but they refused to separate from the foggy pain.

"I'm never drinking with you again," Angie said. "Where did you learn to drink like that?"

Peggy frowned. She felt too hung over for having only shared half a very small bottle of peach schnapps. 

"During the war," she said absently, still trying to pull something coherent loose from the jumble of senses and shadows whirling around her mind. "Some of the people I worked with drank like fish."

With a low whimper, Angie lifted her head. Her lips were pink, and Peggy didn't know why that thought was important, but it was.

"You never talk about the war," Angie said. "I mean, sure, you talk about the war. Nobody doesn't talk about it. But you never say what you did."

Peggy dredged up a smile that she hoped looked reassuring, and not like a grimace. "Much the same as I do now."

"But for the Army, right?"

"More or less."

Angie nodded, as though that answer was actually a good, satisfying one, rather than a very badly done hedging around the whole question. If Peggy had been a little less hung over, she would have been ashamed at just how badly she'd done it.

Where had all her carefully honed lying skills gone? Apparently they'd dissolved in all the alcohol she'd consumed.

Really, what had they drunk? There hadn't been enough in the bottle for more than two or three shots each.

"I'm never drinking this much again," Angie said. "Gin is disgusting."

Ah, that explained it. Gin had always given Peggy the worst hangovers of any spirit. It was why she usually avoided it, but she'd been given a bottle for a birthday, years ago, and she'd never had the heart to give it away to anyone else.

She'd never wanted to expose anyone else to this period of utter agony.

Peggy tried to smile. "It's vile stuff, and I apologise for it unreservedly."

Angie shrugged. "Nah, don't be sorry. It probably wouldn't have been so bad if we'd had pie to soak it up."

"Where did the pie go?"

"I ate it. Seemed a shame to throw it out, and you were..." Angie trailed off, a hint of pink appearing high on her cheeks. "I found out that it makes me sick way before peach schnapps does."

Peggy winced in sympathy.

"Although maybe the pie and the schnapps would have been worse," Angie said.

"Probably," Peggy said. 

Her head was still threatening to explode, but the hot pokers in her eyes seemed to be easing off, so she didn't need to squint anymore to see Angie. There was something niggling at the back of her mind, though. Something about seeing Angie from this angle, and the hint of pink in Angie's cheeks, that was supposed to mean something. It was very important, but she couldn't pull it free from the tangle of schnapps-and-gin-infused dullness blanketing her mind.

There was a smile pulling at the corner of Angie's mouth.

Angie's pink, smiling mouth. A memory tried to float free, but the grey blankness of the hangover snatched it back.

Angie propped herself up on one elbow and pushed her tangled hair away from her face. She was looking more alert by the moment. Peggy wished she had the same recuperative powers. If she tried to sit up, she was fairly sure she'd throw up.

The smile lurked at the corners of Angie's mouth as she reached up and gently tapped Peggy on the nose. "You're cute, English, but hangovers don't suit you. Not when you're wearing green, anyway. You clash."

The words, the affectionate tone, and Angie's happy pink smile nudged at the memory trapped inside Peggy's mind. But it was her touch, the fond tap on her nose, which pulled the cork out of the bottle and allowed everything to escape.

Images flooded Peggy's vision. Angie, smiling down at her. Angie, laughing so hard she toppled against Peggy. Angie, looking up as the laughter transformed into something else.

Sense memories followed. Warm lips tasting of peach and juniper. Quiet gasps. Fine hair tangling around her fingers.

Eyes sliding closed, too heavy to hold up even though she didn't want the night to end.

Angie bit her lip. "You remember?"

Peggy started to nod, but her head tried to explode again. Her voice sounded rustier than she expected. "I remember."

"You're not slugging me," Angie said. "I'm hoping that's a good sign."

"I'm not sure I can move yet," Peggy said.

"Oh."

It would be easy to blame it on the alcohol. Peggy wouldn't even be lying if she said that gin was a vile drink that always made her far drunker--and far more hung over--than anything else, including the stuff Howard used to cook up in his lab. She could say that it hadn't meant anything; it had just been a drunken instinct, and no harm done.

No harm, except for the disappointed look in Angie's eyes, already fading into resignation.

The words were there right on the tip of Peggy's tongue. Nobody would get hurt this way.

"Look, it's not a big--" Angie started to say, but the rest was lost when Peggy tugged her down into a kiss.

It tasted awful; their lips were too dry, and Peggy's head was definitely going to explode, but Angie melted against her with a happy humming sound, and Peggy got lost in it for a while.

Angie was smiling when the kiss ended, a wide smile that seemed to fill the room with light and happiness. It was a terrifying kind of joy, brighter than anything Peggy had seen before. Warmer than anything she'd felt for a long, long time.

"Thank you," Angie said.

"For what?"

"For not blaming the alcohol."

Peggy didn't tell her how close it had been. She just smiled and brushed a lock of hair away from Angie's eyes. "Would you like to have dinner?"

"We have dinner most nights," Angie said.

"You serve me dinner," Peggy said. "That's not the same thing."

"Oh, you mean fancy dinner, with napkins and tiny forks and all that?" Angie said. "That's getting kind of extravagant, English. What do you expect a girl to do for that?"

Peggy rolled her eyes, which hurt, but not as much as before. "I don't expect anything. That's not why I asked."

Angie's smile was crooked, but it stole Peggy's breath. "Okay, you're on."

"I won't always be able to make advance plans," Peggy warned. "My shifts aren't always predictable."

"I'm not kissing you because you're predictable." Angie leaned down for another quick kiss. "If I wanted predictable...well, there's a half dozen people right here in the building I'd be kissing. Or I'd ask one of my regulars at the diner, maybe." She cocked her head. "Forget I said that last bit. But the point is, I'm not looking for predictable and ordinary. I like _you_."

"Oh." Peggy tried to think of something to say, but all that emerged was, "You're welcome."

Angie chuckled and put her head down on Peggy's shoulder again. "How long do we have before breakfast?"

Peggy glanced at the sliver of sky she could see through the window. "At least an hour."

"Good. Maybe if we nap, the hangover will be gone."

Peggy could think of a dozen good reasons why napping was a terrible, awful idea. Dreadful. Napping with Angie's soft warmth pressing into her side, her breath tickling her throat, was definitely not going to make a hangover better. It would probably make it worse, when they had to scramble to wash and dress and rush to breakfast later.

All those perfectly good reasons for getting up floated away when Angie made a happy sound and twined her fingers with Peggy's.

Later was later. For now, Peggy's head was trying to explode, and lying very still with Angie curled around her was exactly what she needed.


End file.
